John Berryman

John Berryman: Life, Friends, is Boring.

Order: Reorder
Duration: 6:08
Updated: 12 May 2008
views: 87149

Berryman in Dublin, 1967, with Dream Song 14. Interviewed by Al Alvarez.

wn.com/John Berryman Life, Friends, Is Boring.

Berryman: There Sat Down, Once, a Thing on Henry's Heart.

Order: Reorder
Duration: 2:21
Updated: 12 May 2008
views: 69639

John Berryman in Dublin, 1967, reading Dream Song 29. Berryman was interviewed by Al Alvarez for a BBC arts programme and was drunk during filming, as the attentive viewer may notice.

wn.com/Berryman There Sat Down, Once, A Thing On Henry's Heart.

John Berryman - Guggenheim Museum 1963

Order: Reorder
Duration: 51:14
Updated: 22 Nov 2014
views: 2714

John Berryman reading The Dream Songs for the first time in public at the Guggenheim Museum in 1963. Introduction by Stanley Kunitz.

wn.com/John Berryman Guggenheim Museum 1963

The Poetry of John Berryman (1970) 1/6

Order: Reorder
Duration: 9:48
Updated: 23 Feb 2010
views: 15603

I ripped this straight from the only existing videotape copy of this astonishing and historically crucial interview. It needs to be shared with the world, not only those with high-end WorldCat accounts. Let the chips fall where they may. This interview took place on October 8, 1970. Fifteen months later, on January 7, 1972, John Berryman committed suicide by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was 57. In this interview, as on the page, Berryman is bristling with life. ................................................................................. THE POETRY OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1970) Brockport Writers Forum (State University of New York College at Brockport) Interviewers: William Heyen & Jerome Mazzaro Produced & Directed for Television by Francis R. Filardo ................................................................................ From John Haffenden's THE LIFE OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1982): "In October, shortly after beginning another slip [from sobriety], Berryman flew to give a reading and be interviewed on videotape at the State University of New York at Brockport. William Heyen, director of the Brockport Writers Forum, who was his host for a visit lasting two days, found himself awed and agitated by Berryman, whose arrival late on Wednesday 7 October had been preceded by erratic and inconsequential phone calls and travel delays. Immediately after the visit, Heyen took copious notes from having 'felt a sense of history in his presence': **Beard trimmed, hair not as wild, or high....Charming, disputatious, dominating, brilliant....'I won that round' after destroying someone trying to be friendly. He had a bad foot, pinched or displaced nerve. Went shoeless....In my easy chair Friday morning, stretched out straight, he seemed unreal, his clothes much too big for him, or so it seemed, as though there were nothing under his clothes. And before the reading he came out of the bathroom shirtless, all bone....We did get him to eat: a cup of chicken soup Wed. night; a ham & cheese sandwich Th. noon; a decent dinner Thurs. night. Constant bourbon, water, no ice. 'Mr. Heyen, I'm an alcoholic. I'd like another drink.' I'd say sure.Betrayer, I suppose. He wrote my wife a poem out, which we'll frame: 'After you went to bed, / Your tall sweet husband and I talked all night, / until there was no more to be said' ["John Berryman: A Memoir and an Interview," Ohio Review, Winter 1974].** "On Thursday morning they conducted the television interview, though Berryman followed his own train of talk rather than oblige Heyen's formal questions. Towards the end, Heyen observed that mental illness seemed to have afflicted Berryman's generation. **Yes, that's so. To find anything resembling it, you have to look at two generations, at least that I think of offhand: the English poets of the nineteenth century -- Beddoes, Darley, and so on -- and the Soviet poets just after the Revolution -- Mayakovsky and Yessenin. And now! Well, I don't know. I don't know. Some people certainly feel that it's the price you pay for an overdeveloped sensibility. Namely, you know, the door sticks, as I try to open it, it sticks. Okay, so I have a nervous breakdown. The guy at the corner of Fifth and Hennepin, the door sticks, shit, he fixes it and he opens it. No sweat! I've been in hospital for six months! There is an over-development of sensibility, okay, otherwise we couldn't draw; just as a really good carpenter or cabinet maker has a sensitivity, feels differently about wood from the rest of us. It's the price we pay. So every now and then we wind up in hospital, where they find us completely untreatable, and pretty soon they let us go. And we're loose on the body of society again.** "The deluded and saddening complacency he expressed was soon to be punctured. After another sleepless night, Heyen delivered Berryman to his plane for New York on the Friday morning. After an hour with Robert Giroux and another editor, Michael De Capua, at El Quixote by the Chelsea Hotel, Berryman took the plane back to Minneapolis that night. In a state of acute alcoholic exhaustion, he went 'out of contact' (to use his own phrase) for some hours and turned up only on the Sunday morning; it is impossible to reconstruct his movements in the interim. Confronted in his living-room by his [A.A.] sponsor and by Kate and others, he was admitted once again for treatment at St. Mary's Hospital, where he later reproached himself for being unable to cope with the genuine solicitude of his wife and friends."

wn.com/The Poetry Of John Berryman (1970) 1 6

The Poetry of John Berryman (1970) 2/6

Order: Reorder
Duration: 9:53
Updated: 23 Feb 2010
views: 4271

I ripped this straight from the only existing videotape copy of this astonishing and historically crucial interview. It needs to be shared with the world, not only those with high-end WorldCat accounts. Let the chips fall where they may. This interview took place on October 8, 1970. Fifteen months later, on January 7, 1972, John Berryman committed suicide by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was 57. In this interview, as on the page, Berryman is bristling with life. ................................................................................. THE POETRY OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1970) Brockport Writers Forum (State University of New York College at Brockport) Interviewers: William Heyen & Jerome Mazzaro Produced & Directed for Television by Francis R. Filardo ................................................................................ From John Haffenden's THE LIFE OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1982): "In October, shortly after beginning another slip [from sobriety], Berryman flew to give a reading and be interviewed on videotape at the State University of New York at Brockport. William Heyen, director of the Brockport Writers Forum, who was his host for a visit lasting two days, found himself awed and agitated by Berryman, whose arrival late on Wednesday 7 October had been preceded by erratic and inconsequential phone calls and travel delays. Immediately after the visit, Heyen took copious notes from having 'felt a sense of history in his presence': **Beard trimmed, hair not as wild, or high....Charming, disputatious, dominating, brilliant....'I won that round' after destroying someone trying to be friendly. He had a bad foot, pinched or displaced nerve. Went shoeless....In my easy chair Friday morning, stretched out straight, he seemed unreal, his clothes much too big for him, or so it seemed, as though there were nothing under his clothes. And before the reading he came out of the bathroom shirtless, all bone....We did get him to eat: a cup of chicken soup Wed. night; a ham & cheese sandwich Th. noon; a decent dinner Thurs. night. Constant bourbon, water, no ice. 'Mr. Heyen, I'm an alcoholic. I'd like another drink.' I'd say sure.Betrayer, I suppose. He wrote my wife a poem out, which we'll frame: 'After you went to bed, / Your tall sweet husband and I talked all night, / until there was no more to be said' ["John Berryman: A Memoir and an Interview," Ohio Review, Winter 1974].** "On Thursday morning they conducted the television interview, though Berryman followed his own train of talk rather than oblige Heyen's formal questions. Towards the end, Heyen observed that mental illness seemed to have afflicted Berryman's generation. **Yes, that's so. To find anything resembling it, you have to look at two generations, at least that I think of offhand: the English poets of the nineteenth century -- Beddoes, Darley, and so on -- and the Soviet poets just after the Revolution -- Mayakovsky and Yessenin. And now! Well, I don't know. I don't know. Some people certainly feel that it's the price you pay for an overdeveloped sensibility. Namely, you know, the door sticks, as I try to open it, it sticks. Okay, so I have a nervous breakdown. The guy at the corner of Fifth and Hennepin, the door sticks, shit, he fixes it and he opens it. No sweat! I've been in hospital for six months! There is an over-development of sensibility, okay, otherwise we couldn't draw; just as a really good carpenter or cabinet maker has a sensitivity, feels differently about wood from the rest of us. It's the price we pay. So every now and then we wind up in hospital, where they find us completely untreatable, and pretty soon they let us go. And we're loose on the body of society again.** "The deluded and saddening complacency he expressed was soon to be punctured. After another sleepless night, Heyen delivered Berryman to his plane for New York on the Friday morning. After an hour with Robert Giroux and another editor, Michael De Capua, at El Quixote by the Chelsea Hotel, Berryman took the plane back to Minneapolis that night. In a state of acute alcoholic exhaustion, he went 'out of contact' (to use his own phrase) for some hours and turned up only on the Sunday morning; it is impossible to reconstruct his movements in the interim. Confronted in his living-room by his [A.A.] sponsor and by Kate and others, he was admitted once again for treatment at St. Mary's Hospital, where he later reproached himself for being unable to cope with the genuine solicitude of his wife and friends."

wn.com/The Poetry Of John Berryman (1970) 2 6

The Poetry of John Berryman (1970) 4/6

Order: Reorder
Duration: 9:13
Updated: 23 Feb 2010
views: 2455

I ripped this straight from the only existing videotape copy of this astonishing and historically crucial interview. It needs to be shared with the world, not only those with high-end WorldCat accounts. Let the chips fall where they may. This interview took place on October 8, 1970. Fifteen months later, on January 7, 1972, John Berryman committed suicide by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was 57. In this interview, as on the page, Berryman is bristling with life. ................................................................................. THE POETRY OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1970) Brockport Writers Forum (State University of New York College at Brockport) Interviewers: William Heyen & Jerome Mazzaro Produced & Directed for Television by Francis R. Filardo ................................................................................ From John Haffenden's THE LIFE OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1982): "In October, shortly after beginning another slip [from sobriety], Berryman flew to give a reading and be interviewed on videotape at the State University of New York at Brockport. William Heyen, director of the Brockport Writers Forum, who was his host for a visit lasting two days, found himself awed and agitated by Berryman, whose arrival late on Wednesday 7 October had been preceded by erratic and inconsequential phone calls and travel delays. Immediately after the visit, Heyen took copious notes from having 'felt a sense of history in his presence': **Beard trimmed, hair not as wild, or high....Charming, disputatious, dominating, brilliant....'I won that round' after destroying someone trying to be friendly. He had a bad foot, pinched or displaced nerve. Went shoeless....In my easy chair Friday morning, stretched out straight, he seemed unreal, his clothes much too big for him, or so it seemed, as though there were nothing under his clothes. And before the reading he came out of the bathroom shirtless, all bone....We did get him to eat: a cup of chicken soup Wed. night; a ham & cheese sandwich Th. noon; a decent dinner Thurs. night. Constant bourbon, water, no ice. 'Mr. Heyen, I'm an alcoholic. I'd like another drink.' I'd say sure.Betrayer, I suppose. He wrote my wife a poem out, which we'll frame: 'After you went to bed, / Your tall sweet husband and I talked all night, / until there was no more to be said' ["John Berryman: A Memoir and an Interview," Ohio Review, Winter 1974].** "On Thursday morning they conducted the television interview, though Berryman followed his own train of talk rather than oblige Heyen's formal questions. Towards the end, Heyen observed that mental illness seemed to have afflicted Berryman's generation. **Yes, that's so. To find anything resembling it, you have to look at two generations, at least that I think of offhand: the English poets of the nineteenth century -- Beddoes, Darley, and so on -- and the Soviet poets just after the Revolution -- Mayakovsky and Yessenin. And now! Well, I don't know. I don't know. Some people certainly feel that it's the price you pay for an overdeveloped sensibility. Namely, you know, the door sticks, as I try to open it, it sticks. Okay, so I have a nervous breakdown. The guy at the corner of Fifth and Hennepin, the door sticks, shit, he fixes it and he opens it. No sweat! I've been in hospital for six months! There is an over-development of sensibility, okay, otherwise we couldn't draw; just as a really good carpenter or cabinet maker has a sensitivity, feels differently about wood from the rest of us. It's the price we pay. So every now and then we wind up in hospital, where they find us completely untreatable, and pretty soon they let us go. And we're loose on the body of society again.** "The deluded and saddening complacency he expressed was soon to be punctured. After another sleepless night, Heyen delivered Berryman to his plane for New York on the Friday morning. After an hour with Robert Giroux and another editor, Michael De Capua, at El Quixote by the Chelsea Hotel, Berryman took the plane back to Minneapolis that night. In a state of acute alcoholic exhaustion, he went 'out of contact' (to use his own phrase) for some hours and turned up only on the Sunday morning; it is impossible to reconstruct his movements in the interim. Confronted in his living-room by his [A.A.] sponsor and by Kate and others, he was admitted once again for treatment at St. Mary's Hospital, where he later reproached himself for being unable to cope with the genuine solicitude of his wife and friends."

wn.com/The Poetry Of John Berryman (1970) 4 6

The Poetry of John Berryman (1970) 5/6

Order: Reorder
Duration: 9:47
Updated: 23 Feb 2010
views: 2912

I ripped this straight from the only existing videotape copy of this astonishing and historically crucial interview. It needs to be shared with the world, not only those with high-end WorldCat accounts. Let the chips fall where they may. This interview took place on October 8, 1970. Fifteen months later, on January 7, 1972, John Berryman committed suicide by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was 57. In this interview, as on the page, Berryman is bristling with life. ................................................................................. THE POETRY OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1970) Brockport Writers Forum (State University of New York College at Brockport) Interviewers: William Heyen & Jerome Mazzaro Produced & Directed for Television by Francis R. Filardo ................................................................................ From John Haffenden's THE LIFE OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1982): "In October, shortly after beginning another slip [from sobriety], Berryman flew to give a reading and be interviewed on videotape at the State University of New York at Brockport. William Heyen, director of the Brockport Writers Forum, who was his host for a visit lasting two days, found himself awed and agitated by Berryman, whose arrival late on Wednesday 7 October had been preceded by erratic and inconsequential phone calls and travel delays. Immediately after the visit, Heyen took copious notes from having 'felt a sense of history in his presence': **Beard trimmed, hair not as wild, or high....Charming, disputatious, dominating, brilliant....'I won that round' after destroying someone trying to be friendly. He had a bad foot, pinched or displaced nerve. Went shoeless....In my easy chair Friday morning, stretched out straight, he seemed unreal, his clothes much too big for him, or so it seemed, as though there were nothing under his clothes. And before the reading he came out of the bathroom shirtless, all bone....We did get him to eat: a cup of chicken soup Wed. night; a ham & cheese sandwich Th. noon; a decent dinner Thurs. night. Constant bourbon, water, no ice. 'Mr. Heyen, I'm an alcoholic. I'd like another drink.' I'd say sure.Betrayer, I suppose. He wrote my wife a poem out, which we'll frame: 'After you went to bed, / Your tall sweet husband and I talked all night, / until there was no more to be said' ["John Berryman: A Memoir and an Interview," Ohio Review, Winter 1974].** "On Thursday morning they conducted the television interview, though Berryman followed his own train of talk rather than oblige Heyen's formal questions. Towards the end, Heyen observed that mental illness seemed to have afflicted Berryman's generation. **Yes, that's so. To find anything resembling it, you have to look at two generations, at least that I think of offhand: the English poets of the nineteenth century -- Beddoes, Darley, and so on -- and the Soviet poets just after the Revolution -- Mayakovsky and Yessenin. And now! Well, I don't know. I don't know. Some people certainly feel that it's the price you pay for an overdeveloped sensibility. Namely, you know, the door sticks, as I try to open it, it sticks. Okay, so I have a nervous breakdown. The guy at the corner of Fifth and Hennepin, the door sticks, shit, he fixes it and he opens it. No sweat! I've been in hospital for six months! There is an over-development of sensibility, okay, otherwise we couldn't draw; just as a really good carpenter or cabinet maker has a sensitivity, feels differently about wood from the rest of us. It's the price we pay. So every now and then we wind up in hospital, where they find us completely untreatable, and pretty soon they let us go. And we're loose on the body of society again.** "The deluded and saddening complacency he expressed was soon to be punctured. After another sleepless night, Heyen delivered Berryman to his plane for New York on the Friday morning. After an hour with Robert Giroux and another editor, Michael De Capua, at El Quixote by the Chelsea Hotel, Berryman took the plane back to Minneapolis that night. In a state of acute alcoholic exhaustion, he went 'out of contact' (to use his own phrase) for some hours and turned up only on the Sunday morning; it is impossible to reconstruct his movements in the interim. Confronted in his living-room by his [A.A.] sponsor and by Kate and others, he was admitted once again for treatment at St. Mary's Hospital, where he later reproached himself for being unable to cope with the genuine solicitude of his wife and friends."

wn.com/The Poetry Of John Berryman (1970) 5 6

The Poetry of John Berryman (1970) 6/6

Order: Reorder
Duration: 10:05
Updated: 23 Feb 2010
views: 2737

I ripped this straight from the only existing videotape copy of this astonishing and historically crucial interview. It needs to be shared with the world, not only those with high-end WorldCat accounts. Let the chips fall where they may. This interview took place on October 8, 1970. Fifteen months later, on January 7, 1972, John Berryman committed suicide by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was 57. In this interview, as on the page, Berryman is bristling with life. ................................................................................. THE POETRY OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1970) Brockport Writers Forum (State University of New York College at Brockport) Interviewers: William Heyen & Jerome Mazzaro Produced & Directed for Television by Francis R. Filardo ................................................................................ From John Haffenden's THE LIFE OF JOHN BERRYMAN (1982): "In October, shortly after beginning another slip [from sobriety], Berryman flew to give a reading and be interviewed on videotape at the State University of New York at Brockport. William Heyen, director of the Brockport Writers Forum, who was his host for a visit lasting two days, found himself awed and agitated by Berryman, whose arrival late on Wednesday 7 October had been preceded by erratic and inconsequential phone calls and travel delays. Immediately after the visit, Heyen took copious notes from having 'felt a sense of history in his presence': **Beard trimmed, hair not as wild, or high....Charming, disputatious, dominating, brilliant....'I won that round' after destroying someone trying to be friendly. He had a bad foot, pinched or displaced nerve. Went shoeless....In my easy chair Friday morning, stretched out straight, he seemed unreal, his clothes much too big for him, or so it seemed, as though there were nothing under his clothes. And before the reading he came out of the bathroom shirtless, all bone....We did get him to eat: a cup of chicken soup Wed. night; a ham & cheese sandwich Th. noon; a decent dinner Thurs. night. Constant bourbon, water, no ice. 'Mr. Heyen, I'm an alcoholic. I'd like another drink.' I'd say sure.Betrayer, I suppose. He wrote my wife a poem out, which we'll frame: 'After you went to bed, / Your tall sweet husband and I talked all night, / until there was no more to be said' ["John Berryman: A Memoir and an Interview," Ohio Review, Winter 1974].** "On Thursday morning they conducted the television interview, though Berryman followed his own train of talk rather than oblige Heyen's formal questions. Towards the end, Heyen observed that mental illness seemed to have afflicted Berryman's generation. **Yes, that's so. To find anything resembling it, you have to look at two generations, at least that I think of offhand: the English poets of the nineteenth century -- Beddoes, Darley, and so on -- and the Soviet poets just after the Revolution -- Mayakovsky and Yessenin. And now! Well, I don't know. I don't know. Some people certainly feel that it's the price you pay for an overdeveloped sensibility. Namely, you know, the door sticks, as I try to open it, it sticks. Okay, so I have a nervous breakdown. The guy at the corner of Fifth and Hennepin, the door sticks, shit, he fixes it and he opens it. No sweat! I've been in hospital for six months! There is an over-development of sensibility, okay, otherwise we couldn't draw; just as a really good carpenter or cabinet maker has a sensitivity, feels differently about wood from the rest of us. It's the price we pay. So every now and then we wind up in hospital, where they find us completely untreatable, and pretty soon they let us go. And we're loose on the body of society again.** "The deluded and saddening complacency he expressed was soon to be punctured. After another sleepless night, Heyen delivered Berryman to his plane for New York on the Friday morning. After an hour with Robert Giroux and another editor, Michael De Capua, at El Quixote by the Chelsea Hotel, Berryman took the plane back to Minneapolis that night. In a state of acute alcoholic exhaustion, he went 'out of contact' (to use his own phrase) for some hours and turned up only on the Sunday morning; it is impossible to reconstruct his movements in the interim. Confronted in his living-room by his [A.A.] sponsor and by Kate and others, he was admitted once again for treatment at St. Mary's Hospital, where he later reproached himself for being unable to cope with the genuine solicitude of his wife and friends."

wn.com/The Poetry Of John Berryman (1970) 6 6

Life, Friends, is Boring by John Berryman

Order: Reorder
Duration: 1:59
Updated: 11 Nov 2010
views: 35001

John Berryman in Dublin (1967) reading Dream Song 14.

wn.com/Life, Friends, Is Boring By John Berryman

John Berryman reads from the Dream Songs (1968) 1/6

Order: Reorder
Duration: 8:42
Updated: 11 Jun 2009
views: 20164

This is an extremely rare recording -- as far as I know the only recording in existence of John Berryman reading at the University of Iowa in 1968. I ripped this directly from the master cassette. I converted the entire reading into a single MP3 file, which you can download here: http://www.mediafire.com/?4c8ri4cm1r881gl

wn.com/John Berryman Reads From The Dream Songs (1968) 1 6

John Berryman reads from the Dream Songs (1968) 3/6

Order: Reorder
Duration: 7:14
Updated: 11 Jun 2009
views: 3472

This is an extremely rare recording -- as far as I know the only recording in existence of John Berryman reading at the University of Iowa in 1968. I ripped this directly from the master cassette.

wn.com/John Berryman Reads From The Dream Songs (1968) 3 6

John Berryman reads from the Dream Songs (1968) 4/6

Order: Reorder
Duration: 9:03
Updated: 11 Jun 2009
views: 2880

This is an extremely rare recording -- as far as I know the only recording in existence of John Berryman reading at the University of Iowa in 1968. I ripped this directly from the master cassette.

wn.com/John Berryman Reads From The Dream Songs (1968) 4 6

OMG & WTF: John Berryman's Legacy of Extreme Expression | Woodberry Poetry Room

Order: Reorder
Duration: 84:10
Updated: 19 Mar 2013
views: 3462

Four poet-critics (Joy Katz, Kathleen Ossip, Sasha Steensen and Heather Treseler) address Berryman's abiding influence on contemporary poetry, exploring issues of racism and alienation, the book-liness and unity of "The Dream Songs," as well as his wildflower version of confessionalism. Archival audio accompanies this substantive and wide-ranging discussion of how Berryman's work continues to inform lyric possibilities. The reading was held as an off-site event, during the 2013 AWP Conference. Date: March 7, 2013, recorded at the Forum Room, Lamont Library, Harvard University.

wn.com/Omg Wtf John Berryman's Legacy Of Extreme Expression | Woodberry Poetry Room

Philip Levine on Lowell and Berryman

Order: Reorder
Duration: 10:00
Updated: 27 Nov 2009
views: 10528

Philip Levine in conversation with Naomi Jaffa at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in November 2009. In this excerpt from their discussion, Levine talks about being taught first by Robert Lowell and then by John Berryman at the University of Iowa, where his classmates included Donald Justice, W.D. Snodgrass and Henri Coulette. Levine says a lot more about having Berryman and Yvor Winters as mentors in his memoir THE BREAD OF TIME (1994/2002). His poetry is published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books in STRANGER TO NOTHING: SELECTED POEMS: http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852247371 This discussion was organised by the Poetry Trust as part of the 2009 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival: http://www.thepoetrytrust.org

wn.com/Philip Levine On Lowell And Berryman

John Berryman Last Day

Order: Reorder
Duration: 7:37
Updated: 05 Oct 2010
views: 2107

Created on August 7, 2010 using FlipShare.

wn.com/John Berryman Last Day

Two Dream Songs by John Berryman

Order: Reorder
Duration: 3:18
Updated: 25 Apr 2009
views: 3514

Although one should hesitate before calling John Berryman an existential poet, much of his work clearly falls within the scope of existential philosophy. In this video, two of his poems examining suicide are presented. The first poem, Dream Song 384, deals with his rage at his father's suicide. In it, he wishes he could dig his father up, ax the casket open, and kill the corpse. The second poem, Dream Song 145, has a more forgiving, melancholy tone. He wonders aloud how "Henry" -- the autobiographical protagonist of the Dream Songs -- can live on with the weight of his father's death. As an interesting aside, there is reason to believe his father was murdered, a fact that surely Berryman knew, but apparently gave him no respite. In any event, it is my intention that this video will do two things: one, show the pain that suicide causes in the lives of loved ones (in this regard I've left the argument solely to Berryman's remarkably tragic poetry); two, to bring attention to Berryman's work in general -- while he achieved much critical acclaim during his career (winning multiple literary awards), he never garnered much mainstream appeal, while other Confessional poets, such as Sylvia Plath, enjoyed popular success. ... The song in the background is a remixed version of "A Warm Place" by NIN and the movie was done in Windows Movie Maker with slides done in Paint.

wn.com/Two Dream Songs By John Berryman

Paul Muldoon reads John Berryman's "Dream Song 14"

Order: Reorder
Duration: 4:55
Updated: 07 Feb 2012
views: 1533

"Listen to this poetry reading to hear the poet Paul Muldoon read John Berryman's poem ""Dream Song 14,"" from his poetry collection The Dream Songs, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award for Poetry. Learn more about the book The Dream Songs at http://us.macmillan.com/thedreamsongs/JohnBerryman Read more about poet John Berryman at http://us.macmillan.com/author/johnberryman-author Learn more about poet Paul Muldoon at http://us.macmillan.com/author/paulmuldoon"

wn.com/Paul Muldoon Reads John Berryman's Dream Song 14

Rediscovering John Berryman

Order: Reorder
Duration: 2:48
Updated: 17 Nov 2011
views: 1834

Trailer for documentary feature film in progress. See more about this project at www.RediscoveringJohnBerryman.com .

wn.com/Rediscovering John Berryman

John Berryman at 100, A Celebration: Panel 2 with April Bernard, Henri Cole, and A. Van Jordan

Order: Reorder
Duration: 47:11
Updated: 07 May 2015
views: 138

John Berryman at 100 Panel 2: April Bernard (Skidmore College), Henri Cole (The Ohio State University), A. Van Jordan. Video care of the Poetry Society of America. The Poetry Society of America, along with Columbia School of the Arts, Barnard Women Poets, and Heyman Center for the Humanities, host an evening of poetry in honor of John Berryman, 1914–1972. A scholar and professor as well as a poet, John Berryman is best-known for The Dream Songs, an intensely personal sequence of 385 poems which brought him the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. In these he invented a style and form able to accommodate a vast range of material while expressing his turbulent emotions. Born John Smith in McAlester, Oklahoma, in 1914, Berryman suffered a great loss at 12 when his father shot himself outside the boy’s window. This event haunted him throughout his life, and recurred as a subject in his poetry. After his mother remarried, John took his stepfather’s name and lived in Massachusetts and New York City. Berryman graduated from Columbia in 1936, then went to study at Cambridge University for two years on a scholarship. The first of three marriages came in 1942, and six years later he published his first important book of poetry, The Dispossessed. A critical biography of the American writer Stephen Crane followed in 1950. In 1955, after teaching stints at Harvard and Princeton, Berryman took a position at the University of Minnesota, where he remained until his death. National attention greeted Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956), a dense, brilliant book-length dialogue with the seventeenth century poet Anne Bradstreet, and intensified with the installments of Berryman’s masterwork, 77 Dream Songs (1964) and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (1968). These portray “Henry,” an anguished and often-deranged character very much like Berryman. Made up of three six-line stanzas that teem with allusions to past and present events and to literary figures, The Dream Songs display an astonishing variety of poetic resources that include slangy diction and a nervous, fractured syntax. Influenced by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats, psychoanalysis, and Berryman’s beloved Shakespeare, they also stirred controversy by drawing on nineteenth century minstrel shows in which white performers in blackface enacted racist stereotypes. The frankness of Berryman’s work influenced his friend Robert Lowell and other Confessional poets like Anne Sexton. The poet’s lifelong struggles with alcoholism and depression ended in 1972, when he jumped off a Minneapolis bridge in the dead of winter.

wn.com/John Berryman At 100, A Celebration Panel 2 With April Bernard, Henri Cole, And A. Van Jordan

John Berryman Last Day Part 2

Order: Reorder
Duration: 3:45
Updated: 05 Oct 2010
views: 2724

Created on August 7, 2010 using FlipShare.

wn.com/John Berryman Last Day Part 2

White Like Me: John Berryman and the Institutionalization of American Poetry at Midcentury

Order: Reorder
Duration: 81:14
Updated: 05 Nov 2015
views: 37

Robert M. Brimingham Lunch Series: "A Conversation With...": 10/22 Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh, Assistant Professor, English Department. How should we make sense of the fact that a major twentieth-century American poet’s appropriated, in the central work of his career, the racist performance tradition known as blackface minstrelsy? The Dream Songs were Berryman’s response to what he saw as a dead end in the history of modernism; they were also conceived and published within the period of some of the most intense violence of the Civil Rights Era. Berryman’s minstrelsy suggests the deep connection between those twinned crises.

wn.com/White Like Me John Berryman And The Institutionalization Of American Poetry At Midcentury

John Berryman at 100, A Celebration: Panel 1 with Rachel Hadas and Daniel Swift

Order: Reorder
Duration: 34:53
Updated: 07 May 2015
views: 88

John Berryman at 100 Panel 1: Rachel Hadas (Rutgers University) and Daniel Swift (Skidmore College). Video care of the Poetry Society of America. The Poetry Society of America, along with Columbia School of the Arts, Barnard Women Poets, and Heyman Center for the Humanities, host an evening of poetry in honor of John Berryman, 1914–1972. A scholar and professor as well as a poet, John Berryman is best-known for The Dream Songs, an intensely personal sequence of 385 poems which brought him the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. In these he invented a style and form able to accommodate a vast range of material while expressing his turbulent emotions. Born John Smith in McAlester, Oklahoma, in 1914, Berryman suffered a great loss at 12 when his father shot himself outside the boy’s window. This event haunted him throughout his life, and recurred as a subject in his poetry. After his mother remarried, John took his stepfather’s name and lived in Massachusetts and New York City. Berryman graduated from Columbia in 1936, then went to study at Cambridge University for two years on a scholarship. The first of three marriages came in 1942, and six years later he published his first important book of poetry, The Dispossessed. A critical biography of the American writer Stephen Crane followed in 1950. In 1955, after teaching stints at Harvard and Princeton, Berryman took a position at the University of Minnesota, where he remained until his death. National attention greeted Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956), a dense, brilliant book-length dialogue with the seventeenth century poet Anne Bradstreet, and intensified with the installments of Berryman’s masterwork, 77 Dream Songs (1964) and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (1968). These portray “Henry,” an anguished and often-deranged character very much like Berryman. Made up of three six-line stanzas that teem with allusions to past and present events and to literary figures, The Dream Songs display an astonishing variety of poetic resources that include slangy diction and a nervous, fractured syntax. Influenced by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats, psychoanalysis, and Berryman’s beloved Shakespeare, they also stirred controversy by drawing on nineteenth century minstrel shows in which white performers in blackface enacted racist stereotypes. The frankness of Berryman’s work influenced his friend Robert Lowell and other Confessional poets like Anne Sexton. The poet’s lifelong struggles with alcoholism and depression ended in 1972, when he jumped off a Minneapolis bridge in the dead of winter.

wn.com/John Berryman At 100, A Celebration Panel 1 With Rachel Hadas And Daniel Swift

Listening to John Berryman: Self-Reflection on Alcoholism

Order: Reorder
Duration: 5:04
Updated: 14 Mar 2016
views: 41

John Berryman, a famous American poet, was very self-reflective of his alcohol use in his novel, Recovery. Yet he took his own life while drunk one day the year before the book was published. What happened?

wn.com/Listening To John Berryman Self Reflection On Alcoholism